AMD Reveals Plans to Move Beyond the Core Race

J. Dzhugashvili writes "The Tech Report has caught wind of AMD's plans for processors over the coming years. Intel may be counting on cramming 'tens to hundreds' of cores in future CPUs, but AMD thinks the core race is just a repeat of the megahertz race that took place a few years ago. Instead, AMD is counting on Accelerated Processing Units, chips that mix and match general-purpose CPU cores with dedicated application processors for graphics and other tasks. In the meantime, AMD is cooking up some new desktop and mobile processors that it hopes will give Intel a run for its money."

Same old.

[sam991]

Intel pushes the 'more power! faster!' philosophy while AMD just redesigns the architecture and it takes Intel a few years to catch up. Not much has changed since 2000.

Re:CPUs and GPUs

[Bright Apollo]

This is expected news, if you step back objectively.

AMD loses and will continue to lose the manufacturing race with Intel. Intel will likely continue to develop smaller and smaller dies, and AMD could never hope to leapfrog them for lack of cash to do so. Of course, give Intel their due: they employ some pretty smart people as well.

Ultimately, making your CPU do more specialized tasking, or capable of programmatic specialized tasking (think FPGA) is the right kind of innovation for them. I would also look to see more RISC-based operations, and wouldn't be at all surprised if they went off in that direction in some way. If they do, IBM has something to worry about... ... which brings me to the POWER CPUs. Where I work, I can architect a solution in a variety of ways, and currently I choose to build p550s with POWER5s (later POWER6s) with all the nice dynamic partitioning and micro-partitioning that you cannot get (at that level) from anyone else. I wonder how comfortable IBM would be feeling if they saw AMD start to offer the same kinds of partitioning elements in their CPUs and architectures?

This is all good news for me.

-BA

Re:Integrated graphics..

[SQL Error]

Is the current generation of CPU not optimized for mathematic operations?

What do want to run on a computer that isn't "mathematic operations"?

More specifically:

Are current CPUs optimised for physics simulations? No.
For image processing? No.
For data compression? No.
For encryption? No.

These are all areas where custom cores can provide enormous performance benefits (both in absolute terms, and in terms of performance per watt) over current CPUs, which are general purpose.

Re:Integrated graphics..

[CAIMLAS]

Imagine a processor with special circuitry routines which will speed up the operation of the following by a significant percent:
- database servers
- web servers
- CAD and 3d programs (rendering)

Basically, it's not much different than MMX or any other extension to a processor. The programmers can still code for the x86 (or whatever) architecture and the same operating system, but then shortcut those instructions when the additional instructions are found to be available. Or maybe they can work it transparently so programmers don't have to do anything additional - it'll optimize on the fly (provided they can figure out how to do that). Overall, I think the software headache will be worth it to companies, as they will be able to have substantial gains in performance in the hardware department, cutting cost while gaining performance. What datacenter wouldn't love to use half as many machines to provide access to the same amount of information; what animator wouldn't love to have their workstation be able to render things at twice the speed?

PPC called and wants its AltiVec back?

[AHuxley]

Where will all the optimised code come from?
What will the cost be in making it all work 'just' for AMD?
How locked in would any code be?
Over the life of a project, will it be worth 'porting' code to AMD?

Re:Free Enterprise

[badboy_tw2002]

Of course, for the competition of the type that exists between Intel and AMD or AMD/Nvidia you need a common standard to compete with. If all apps ran on the same OS/GUI API then you'd have a true choice in operating systems (this one is more secure, this one faster, this one runs Word twice as fast and handles more DB load, etc). CPUs have x86, GPUs have DirectX/OpenGL, OSs need a standard application interface commmonly accepted by software developers. Otherwise you're comparing not just the OS but all the stuff that goes with it (skins, music players, etc etc etc)

Re:Integrated graphics..

[Deflatamouse!]

Remember, a large percentage of the time the entire system - including CPUs, chipsets, memory, disks, etc., are just pushing data around without performing any calculations. We could all gain from better performance of these operations as well.

Re:Integrated graphics..

[GeffDE]

Physics simulations and image processing can be (and are) done on GPUs. Same for any hardcore math stuff, like Folding Proteins [stanford.edu]. The problem with the AMD approach is that there are only so many (and I don't think it is many, but I really don't know, so if you do, please let me know) different kinds of operations. Like I said, the physics simulations and image processing are the same type of problem and also conveniently tackled very proficiently by graphics hardware.

Re:PPC called and wants its AltiVec back?

[elhedran]

Where will all the optimised code come from?

Believe it or not, 100cores requires optimized code as well. programs don't magically become multi-threaded, a developer has to work out how to split the work up into 2/4/100 threads and not lose performance due to locking/thread communication.

What will the cost be in making it all work 'just' for AMD?

Probably about the same as making it work for a new graphics card

How locked in would any code be?

It sounds to me they are talking optimization. hence it would run on an intel, just slower.

Over the life of a project, will it be worth 'porting' code to AMD?

Ah, I'm not going to try and answer this one. But it is an excellent question and should be asked (and answered) by AMD.

Re:Integrated graphics..

[kestasjk]

As a database guy I really don't think processors would make a bit of difference to database speed in the vast majority of cases. Database design is usually what's at fault when you're shown a slow database, followed closely by query design, followed by memory, followed by hard disks, followed by processors. The same sort of thing applies to web servers; the bottleneck is never the processor.

As for CAD, well I think that would be quite a waste. Remember that processor designers only have so many transistors to use, and they have to make the most of them. It would be a waste of die real estate, chip designer time, CAD software writer time, etc, just to get a slight performance boost. I sure wouldn't want to pay for CAD specific instructions when I don't use any CAD tools.

I think general purpose processors should leave as much as possible up to software; optimize the general purpose stuff as much as possible so that everything runs faster, and if a user needs some extra fast processing capability for a specific task they can get an extra processor for that purpose.
You can buy external graphics, crypto, and physics processors; if there was enough demand there would also be external database, web server, and CAD processors.

Yes, if those were competitors.

[Somatic]

The thing is, I like to be able to play games on my home computer. Any old game I see at the store. I want to be able to play it. A home computer is half about entertainment. Windows has no competition in that area. They just don't.

I use Linux daily at work, but, I have no driving need to have a Linux box at home. I don't do that much worky stuff at home. I'm already burned out after doing it all day at work (and if I need to do more work, I can ssh in with Cygwin from home). And you really can't game on Linux. Yes, I'm sure some games are compatible with various Linuxes (the only one that comes to mind is Puzzle Pirates, and that's because it's written in Java), and I guess there's Windows emulation. But let's be honest. You're not gaming on Linux.

Mac, well. I can honestly never see myself owning one. If I was going to go another OS, it would be Linux for its flexibility. Apple just makes me nervous with all its proprietary stuff. I know lots of people own Macs and are happy with them. But the number of programs in general that are written for Mac is too tiny for me, games especially.

I have a box of junk in the corner with a bunch of games in it, and out of curiousity, I pulled them out while writing this, just to see which were compatible with Mac right out of the box... not with some lameass windows emulation that will run it at 1/10 speed, but actual Mac compatibility. Everquest (and about 7 expansions): Windows. Yeah, there was a Mac version a few years ago, where you get to play on your very own Mac server. Good luck with that. GTA: Vice City: Windows. Knights of the Old Republic: Windows. Dark Age of Camelot: Windows. There are plenty more in the closet. In fact, I'm pretty sure that the only one in my entire collection that is compatible with Mac right out of the box is World of Warcraft.

But I hate World of Warcraft.

Sorry, but, my home box is my entertainment. And Microsoft knows it too. They agressively pursue the gaming angle with developer tools. Now they've got XNA, with the goal being to write a game once and have it play on both xbox or windows with a minimum of development fuss.

They know where their dollars are coming from. They court the market, because they know geeks like me would flee if Linux could entertain me even 1/100th as much. So what I'm saying is no, no there is no Windows competition, not in my market.

Re:Yes, if those were competitors.

[Anonymous Coward]

What? In order for Linux to have games, there needs to be a market for Linux games. That requires Linux gamers. And for that, you need Linux games!

Developers will jump through all sorts of hoops to make games for popular platforms. The only metric which matters is market share.